Event Report – Alan Halsey and Geraldine Monk

Event Report On November 20, 2008, English poets Geraldine Monk and Alan Halsey read to an audience of about 60 people in the Soderberg Auditorium for the sixth and penultimate event of the Fall 2008 schedule. Steve Evans introduced the poets, who each read for about a half an hour. Halsey led off the event, and read from his book The Text of Shelley’s Death. Monk followed and read from her books Selected Poems and Ghost and Other Sonnets. Afterward, both Monk and Halsey took questions from audience members.

Documentation An mp3 recording was made using an Audio-technical condenser Lo-Z AT835b microphone attached to a Marantz PMD660 Portable Solid State Recorder. The event was also recorded on digital video tape. Click images below to enlarge. For more photos, visit the NWS flickr page.

Geraldine Monk

Alan Halsey

Monk and Halsey talk with student writers

Set List

Up Next – Geraldine Monk & Alan Halsey

The New Writing Series welcomes British poets Geraldine Monk and Alan Halsey to the University of Maine campus for a reading on Thursday, November 20, 2008. The event, which is free & open to the public, starts at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Auditorium in Jenness Hall.

Poets Geraldine Monk & Alan Halsey

Nimrod in Hell by Pierre Joris

Pierre Joris reading his long poem “Nimrod in Hell” (7′58″) as part of his April 6, 2006 set for the New Writing Series.

For another vocal take on the same text, recorded in June 2005 for Charles Bernstein’s radio show Close Listening, visit Joris’s PennSound page here (track 5). For an on-line version of the text, and some remarks about it and about Joris more generally, check out Jerome Rothenberg’s posting here.

The Dream of the Desert in the Book by Pierre Joris

A videoclip from Pierre Joris’s reading in the New Writing Series on April 6, 2006.

Ace by Tom Raworth

While in Orono to read in the NWS in October 2008, Tom Raworth kindly agreed to commit his book-length poem Ace to audiocassette. We’re pleased to make the digitized soundfile of this fifteen minute reading available here with the author’s permission.

Tom Raworth's Ace

All Their Stanzas Look Alike by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Poet Thomas Sayers Ellis reads “All Their Stanzas Look Alike” in the UMaine New Writing Series.

Spike Lee at Harvard by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Another track from Thomas Sayers Ellis’s “studio” session in March 2008.

Spike Lee at Harvard (6′37″)

Thomas Sayers Ellis

Atomic Bride by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Another “studio” track from Thomas Sayers Ellis’s visit to the New Writing Series in March 2008.

TS Ellis before his New Writing Series event

Or by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Thomas Sayers Ellis (NWS, spring 2008) reads his poem “Or” (1′38″).

Poet TS Ellis reading from his work